Footnotes on Friday

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Militia, volunteers, and regular army in Regency Britain

A Review of the London Volunteer Cavalry and Flying Artillery in Hyde Park in 1804, unknown artist.

When including a soldier or a military unit in a Regency romance, an author has to ask who was in the area at the time, and what sort of military unit was it. At the time, the regular army was heavily committed overseas, in Portugal and Spain, in India, in the Americas–though, depending on the year, there were regiments who were not on active duty, or who were on home defense duty. The two other options were the militia and the volunteers. Think of the militia as a sort of army reserve, and the volunteers as the home guard. Not quite, but sort of.

The regular army and the milita had long been a feature of Britain. The army was relatively small before the Napoleonic threat–just 45,000 men, two thirds of whom were stationed abroad. They had recruiting issues, and the rank and file were notoriously those who had few other choices–the poor, the unskilled, those who didn’t fit in.

Militia on parade

The militia in Georgian Britain, by contrast, were part-time soldiers serving one month a year in peacetime. There had been a militia since 871, so they were an older establishment than the army itself. By the mid 18th century, every county had to supply, and pay for, a certain number of militia. They were chosen by ballot, though they had the option to pay someone else to serve in their place. They had to serve for four years and did one week’s training four times a year. They served in their home county, and could be called out to deal with an emergency.

With the rising threat from France, the government first passed a law to increase the militia by a further 60,000 men. The innovators didn’t provide any money, so the spaces were filled by those who could afford to pay for their own uniforms and weapons. In other words, the upper and middle classes. Then, after a major military defeat in 1797, the government called for each county to find out how many men were within their borders, and how many would volunteer to defend Britain.

They were stunned by the response. By 1803, 380,000 men had volunteered. The officers tended to be from the upper classes, and the ranks from the lower middle class. Volunteers were exempt from military service and from taxes. They committed themselves to local defense in case of invasion or insurrection, but otherwise remained civilians.

The volunteer forces proved to be a problem. The State couldn’t afford to outfit and train them, and the small local volunteer forces operated outside of military rule, and often refused to serve outside of their own area. There were also manpower problems in the other military units, since men would rather be volunteers than militia, and militia than regular army.

The government went down the compulsory service line, and between 1806 and 1815, volunteer units were disbanded. In many cases their members were taken into militia units. However, this was not the last time Britain raised volunteer forces to its defence.

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Whisky stills, smugglers, and caves

My March release, Flavour of Our Deeds, is partially set in Northumbria.

I wanted my hero and heroine far away from their natural allies, faced on all sides by enemies and uncertain who to trust. Learning a bit about Northumbria introduced all sorts of new plot elements.

For example, did you know that the Coquetdale area of Northumbria was a whisky distilling area (whisky is the Irish, Scots and, as it happens, English borderlands spelling of what the US call whiskey). Coquetdale, in what as now the Northumberland National Park, was full of illegal stills that exported their product not just south into the rest of Northumbria, west into Cumbria, and further afield in the United Kingdom, but also by ship to the Lowlands. The distillers were supported and protected by the locals.

The smugglers carried whisky and wool overseas and brought back genever (Dutch gin) and luxury goods from the continent. They had havens in fishing villages like Boulmer, on which I have based my own fictional village, close to the shore. I’ve removed a few aristocratic families–in my story, the Earls of Grey and their home, Howick Hall, is not mentioned, and nor is Alnwick, Alnwick Castle, or the Duke of Northumberland whose residence the castle was. The sea caves are real, and were used by the smugglers. The excise men did, indeed, have a base at Berwick Upon Tweed, and another at Newcastle, and were too few in number to make much of a dent in the trade.

I would have loved to set the story closer to the Roman wall, but I needed limestone for a good caving system that could be improved by enthusiastic tunnelers. A vast maze of caves was once discovered under Alnwick Moor, and has now been lost again, but caving experts believe there may be many more tunnels and caves than those shallow hollows known to our modern cavers. I’ve invented some, putting it in limestone country to make it plausible.

I’d also have loved to include the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Maybe another time.

 

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Masks and Masked Balls in Regency England


Masked balls and masquerades were a popular part of Georgian culture that continued on throughout the Regency.

People attended wearing a mask, and possibly a costume, and the event often included a time for a general unmasking. First, there were the public balls, such as those at some theatres or at Ranalagh and later Vauxhall Gardens. Those could be attended by anyone with the price of a ticket. All the rules we’ve learned about in reading novels set in the Regency were ignored or turned on their head during the masked part of the evening–and were expected to be. Indeed, only the most careless of guardians would allow a lady under their care to attend.

As for private balls, they could be just as bad, though it depended on the host and the guest list. In the Bluestocking Belles collection Holly and Hopeful Hearts, the high sticklers are shocked that the Duchess of Haverford would include a masked ball at her house party, but she is confident that, with the guest list controlled and her and her committee of ladies on the watch, all propriety will be observed. Even so, a naughty maiden in one story is only saved by the good sense of the rakes who outrage her, and in another story, a lowly-born chef borrows a costume to steal a dance–and a kiss in the garden–with a lady.

In less controlled environments, the behaviour was–and was expected to be–much more lively. Propriety, sobriety, and even chastity were ignored once people put their masks and costumes on. In fact, possibly a private affair, where a person might expect to meet only people from their own class, the guests might be encouraged to be even less careful!

In Lady Beast’s Bridegroom, my heroine Arial wears a half-face mask for a different reason… Because one side of her face is horribly scared. She is delighted in the next novel in the series, One Perfect Dance, when her friend Regina holds a masquerade ball, so that Arial will not stand out from the crowd.

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

One of the subjects I researched for February’s release, Lady Beast’s Bridegroom, was Regency attitudes to beauty. Remember all those sayings of our mothers and our mothers mothers? You can’t judge a book by its cover. Handsome is as handsome does. Beauty is only skin deep. True beauty is in the soul.

The thing is, most people believed the opposite in the Regency whatever they said. And I don’t know if things are any better today.

Here’s part of the Author’s note I wrote for the book.

Even in today’s more diverse culture, physical appearance makes a huge difference in people’s lives. Being heavily overweight, disfigured (especially in the face), or otherwise not fitting social norms for appearance can count against a person in the job market, in romance, and in dozens of other ways.

The Regency era held that attractive people were more trustworthy, more capable, better adjusted and more worthy in every way. Recent research suggests that things haven’t changed. Across cultures, including our own, people judge others on the basis of their attractiveness, and the idea that ‘beautiful is good’ seems to require a ‘disfigured is bad’ corollary.

Then, as now, assistive technology focused on improving aesthetics as well as function. A wooden hand that mimicked a real one, for example. The disfigurement needed to be disguised or hidden in order not to provoke horror.

Could I write a heroine who evokes the typical horrified reaction to disfigurement that has been recorded through time, and who is, nonetheless, a sympathetic character that we want the hero to love? You be the judge.

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Just like clockwork

When I was a child, we used to go every December to Wellington to see the windows at Kircaldy and Stains, the big department store, where each window contained a different animated scene, which we had to follow in order, as they told a story. It was a different story each year, and to me as a child, they were beautiful, exciting, and an important part of Christmas. More recently, I took my grandchildren to see the same windows in the same shop. (My children did not grow up in Wellingon.)

The department store closed in 2016 after 152 years, but some of the automata live on at the Wellington Museum.

I’ve had simpler automata as toys. A monkey that played a drum when wound up. A ballerina that danced when a jewelery case was opened. Automata have always fascinated me.

Perhaps that’s why I have made the hero of the book I’ve just sent to beta the creator of clockwork automata. They were a sensation when they first appeared in the 17th century, and remained popular with wealthy collected and intrigued patrons throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And, as I’ve just indicated, into the 20th, though from the Victorian age on, they tended to be powered rather than clockwork.

The history of mechanical figures goes back into legend and through various accounts of the last 2,500 years. Stories of moving statues, mechanical men, and automated birds who sang pop up in accounts from Ancient Greece and Biblical Judea, Persian and China, the Ottoman Empire, and other places. But we are concerned with Europe in the 18th and 19th century, where they were a sensation with wealthy collectors and influential patrons. Many even went on tour. The History of the Automaton Mechanical Miracles describes three by Pierre Jaquet-Drois, built between 1768 and 1774:

Each figure is 28 inches tall and performs a range of realistic actions. The draughtsman draws four different pictures, including a portrait of Vaucanson’s royal patron, Louis XV. The musician plays upon an organ, while the writer — made of more than 6,000 separate components — can be programmed to pen any message of 40 characters or fewer, making him in the eyes of many the true progenitor of the modern computerised android.

The three automata toured Europe for many decades, advertising the firm that built them, which prospered.

France remained a centre for automata building, moving to powered automata in the second half of the 19th century. Germany and Switzerland also had their great makers.

Clocktower automata like the one in my book are also know as glockenspiel, though the name refers to the instrument that makes the sound rather that the figures. As my hero says, it is made of bells or small pieces of metal struck be hammers. Not the one in Stratford in New Zealand, which is a town not far from where I’m writing this blog post. The town website says:

Since 1999, the clock tower has been entertaining passersby with a short Shakespearean performance four times a day.

Following the striking of the tower bells at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., carved figures of Romeo and Juliet emerge from doors within the tower. As they do so, a recording begins of some of the most famous lines from the Balcony Scene, backed by some suitably Elizabethan music. Six different figures emerge in total (three of Romeo and three of Juliet) during the five-minute mechanized performance, with the last set standing hand in hand. The music plays throughout, with various lines from the play.

The music, along with the lines from the play, is piped out from a modern(ish) sound system. It is not played using a traditional carillon system of bells as found in more authentic towers of this type.

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The origins of the Rom

I was looking up the name Egyptian, as applied to Romani travellers, and came across some recent research that set my off on a bit of a chase.

Egyptian and its derivative, gypsy, are seen by many Romani as insulting terms. My friend Anna, who is proud of her Rom heritage, tells me it is an outsider’s name, based on a false myth, and used to ‘other’ the Rom people from the time they spread through Europe in the early modern era.

Scientists have assumed India as the Romani place of origin for a while, based on language and a brief look at genetic patterns. In a new study of thirteen different groups from different parts of Europe, full genome sequencing has confirmed the assumption, and told us more.

The original population left northwestern India some 1,500 years ago, moving to the Balkans. They left in a single group from a place in what is today Punjab, and travelled through Central Asian and the middle East, losing close to half their number, and finally settling in what is now Bulgaria. There they stayed, until the early twelfth century, when they were on the move again, this time out into Europe in several directions. They reached Spain in the 15th century and England in the 16th.

The study also found that, while Western genes have entered Romani blood lines wherever the travellers have moved (in fact, they have more European genes than South Asian), such mixing with local populations has happened more in some places, and in some times, than others. The chart below is taken from the research paper, and shows particular shared gene sequences by place of origin and length– a) for Europe and b) for South Asia.

https://bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12863-017-0547-x#Fig7

Of course, I then had to look for the story. They left India as the late classical period ended in a series of wars and invasions. They began to leave the Balkans when the Byzantine Empire took over Bulgaria, during a century of disruption and chaos. They reached Spain and Northern Europe at about the time that the Ottomans took over from the Byzantines. So many stories, waiting to be told!

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The dangerous years

Once again, I’ve found myself researching a common childhood killer that, in our Western world, has had its fangs drawn by the twin powers of vaccination and antibiotics.

Diptheria, previously known as the Boulogne sore throat, malignant croup, was described by the Greeks 2500 years ago. In the year I’m writing about, 1825, it has just acquired the name by which we know it today, but effective prevention and treatment were still a century or more away. All my characters could do was keep their patient calm and hope that the ghastly false membrane growing from one tonsil to her uvula would not close the throat entirely, and that the child’s heart and kidneys did not become affected by the toxins the bacteria produces.

Sitting with my hero and heroine as they watched and worried, I once again gave thanks for the era and the country in which I raised my children.  Some forty years ago, one of my daughters had scarlet fever as a complication of mumps. When I told our doctor her temperature and that she was rambling in and out of consciousness, he put snow chains on his car and drove up the hill to give her an introvenous shot of antibiotic. Within half an hour, she was sitting up complaining that she wasn’t allowed to play with her brothers and sisters out in the snow. It’s an experience I have never forgotten.

We live in a time and a country of miracles. In Regency England slums, overcrowding and poor nutrition meant that diptheria, scarlet fever, influenza, mumps, small pox, and other epidemic illnesses spread easily and killed frequently, but a wealthy home was no protection. Children died in numbers that we, who expect to raise our children to adulthood, find it hard to comprehend. One third of children born in the early 1800s did not reach their fifth birthday.

On the whole,  I sanitise this world for my readers. My sick child survives, unharmed. I don’t make a habit of marching through my characters’ nurseries with a scythe. I am

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Those pesky titles!

I made a thing, for those of you who wonder about titles. Those of you who already know, tell me if you see any errors!

 

Except for those few rare women who inherited a title in their own right, or those with a courtesy title who married “down”, women took their husband’s title as well as his name.

Please feel free to download and share the images:

Titles for men: https://judeknightauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1-1.png

Titles for women: https://judeknightauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2-1.png